Art Chowder September | October 2016, Issue 5 | Page 21

Most North Americans experienced belly dance for
the first time at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago,
at an attraction set up on the Midway known as
“A Street in Cairo.” For Victorian Era Americans,
the spectacle was enthralling and simultaneously
grotesque; corsets and petticoats forsworn for low
slung skirts, jangling coin belts and exposed midriffs, revealing muscular undulations and shimmering vibrations. When taken out of its cultural context and displayed to foreigners, belly dance became
relegated to the cabaret and exotic dance clubs of
North America, sold as a titillating and forbidden
experience that went against Victorian ethics of
feminine decorum, modesty, and restraint.

The origins of “American” belly dance thus led to a
slow, steady climb from the bottom of this social and
professional construct. As a ballet dancer, growing
up into my early teens, I received various nuances
of admiration and respect when people were told I
performed in a dance company. As a belly dancer
in my early twenties, the opposite was often true. I
was often mistaken for an exotic dancer, and it was
assumed that what I did was socially rebellious and,
for lack of a better word, “naughty.” Even a century later, Victorian ideals still resonate throughout
what is supposed to be a modern society, and it’s
these assumptions about belly dance that we strive
through our performance troupe and our studio
classes to alter.
September|October 2016 21